Goodbyes
by Triel
Summary: Nine deserved a chance to tell Rose goodbye, not just a pre-planned recording of how he's always felt but what he was feeling right in that moment.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note_:

I don't own Doctor Who or intend to make profit from it.

I always thought Nine would have wanted the chance to tell Rose goodbye, rather than just sending her away and letting a recording do it. And I always thought that perhaps he deserved that chance, too.

Spoilers through The Parting of Ways

Goodbyes (part one of two)

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The Doctor shut the door to the TARDIS, turned, and hit the button, the one that would remove Rose Tyler from his life forever. He sent her away--gone, gone, back to where she would be safe. Rose, his lovely, human, fantastic Rose.

Sent her off, without a by-your-leave, an if-you-would. He just whisked her away, where she could live and be alive, and continue to be her self-same fantastic self.

Ah, and she was that, from the tip of her toes to the top of her dyed-blond hair. She'd be that, as long as she lived.

And he hoped it would be a long, long time. Not forever, nothing lives forever, but a long, long time.

The Doctor looked down at his sonic screwdriver, his lips pinched tight, gripping it with hands that shook with regret. Sent her away, without a real goodbye, like sending away a fragment of his soul, like having it ripped from him with his own hands, and he hadn't gotten a proper goodbye. It was a forever goodbye, and he'd never get to experience it.

The Doctor fiddled with a few buttons on his sonic screwdriver and then set it up on a bundle of wires. He could work without it, and he wanted a goodbye, even if he could never share it with her.

He opened his mouth to try, to see if he could even say the words, to tell her. Goodbye. Just a goodbye? No, he probably couldn't do that, but he'd try. For himself, a final selfish act, just for himself.

He set the screwdriver to record and then bent down to finish the last-ditch effort to eliminate the Dalek troops. He could talk while he worked.

"Rose Tyler, you've been the most fantastic part of my entire life." He stopped, and then said it again, looking up from the wires, right at the screwdriver with his oh-so-pale eyes: "You've been the most fantastic part of my entire life."

He laughed, then.

About to die, and here he is trying to say goodbye to a girl who he'd sent away, who he wanted out of the way. Safe, where she could just go on living without him.

"It's not fair of me," the Doctor acknowledged, looking back down at the bundles of wire and tubing, "but you're just going to have to live fantastically for both of us. Can't hang around collecting dust forever, can I?"

The Doctor went quite as he struggled to set preparations for the destruction of the Daleks, and then grinned at the screwdriver once more.

"Oh, Rose," he said, "I hope you don't hate me for sending you away. I hope you understand. I hope--" he stopped, and then started again.

"I hope you miss me on each grand adventure, but that it doesn't stop you for being fantastic. And I hope you don't settle for Rickey-the-Idiot. You're better than that, you really are. And I hope that some day those stupid apes realize what a treasure you are, how absolutely fantastic you are."

The Doctor realized that there was nothing more he would have been able to say, not if he'd gotten a real goodbye. It was a sight better than what he had, at least.

He tried to smile.

"And now, I need to get back to work," he said, picking up the screwdriver once more.

The Doctor closed his eyes, imagining Rose Tyler. He smiled for just a moment longer and then snap the recording off. He had Dalek fleets to eliminate for, worlds to save, a life to lose.

And she would never see the goodbye, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note_:

I don't own Doctor Who or intend to make profit from it.

I gave Nine the chance to say goodbye, what fun is it if Rose doesn't get a chance to see it?

Spoilers through The Parting of Ways

Goodbyes (part two of two)

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Rose Tyler wasn't sure what she thought of the man that wasn't quite not her Doctor and couldn't quite convince her that he was, either.

"Sonic screwdriver," he said, gesturing with the device. "Not many blokes see a screwdriver and think 'this could be more sonic,' right?" It was Jack's words, and hearing them from this stranger's lips hurt as much as when he used the Doctor's words. They weren't right, coming from that bucktoothed mouth, with those dark eyes and all that hair.

"Lemme see it," Rose said, holding her hand out for the screwdriver. She knew a few settings, didn't she? And anyway, it would be proof of a kind she didn't really need.

The new Doctor handed it over, watching her with words bubbling up behind his lips. He held them back, but he had a nervous sort of fidget that told her he wanted to burst out with a stream of conversation.

Rose fiddled with the sonic screwdriver, turning to "patching barbed wire" and "just plain ol' sonic," flipping through the numbers in a way she'd only done a hand full of times, hadn't wanted to do more than a hand full of times.

It had been her Doctor's way of saving the day, hadn't it? Not hers.

She clicked to the next setting, she wasn't even sure what it was, and then another.

And then… there was a blue light, a familiar form being projected.

"Give me that," the Doctor snapped, suddenly, holding out his hand expectantly. But Rose didn't listen. Her eyes had fallen on that beam, that projection.

"What's this?" She asked, watching the recording. It was saying something, but she couldn't hear what.

"Just a recording," the Doctor said, nervously.

"Well, where's the volume?" She tried to figure it out, frantic fingers scrambling over the screwdriver, adjusting…

Until the picture disappeared.

"Make it come back!" Rose cried, turning to look at the Doctor, tears brimming in her eyes. "Bring it back."

The Doctor nodded, a sad sort of smile twitching over his lips, and plucked the device from her fingers."Here," he said, turning it back and setting the volume up.

The Doctor stood before Rose, an eight-inch tall projection, each feature frozen perfectly as she remembered, from the heavy jacket to the almost nonexistent hair.

"I'd wanted to say goodbye," the Doctor explained, unable to reach out and take Rose's hand in his awkward new one. "I thought I was going to die, and I hadn't said goodbye."

Rose nodded, "okay," she said, though clearly it wasn't.

"When I sent you away," he emphasized. "I'd wanted to say goodbye."

"Emergency Program One--" she started, because that had been a goodbye of sorts, hadn't it?

"Wasn't a goodbye," he cut in. "It was a precaution. It was a last resort. I wanted to tell you in person, what I was feeling at that exact moment, when I knew I was going to die. It's not me at my best, Rose, or my most heroic."

Rose knew, intellectually, that this man was the same as he one in the projection, and when he said things like that, she could see it, hear it in his tone, was forced to believe it.

But looking at her Doctor on the projection and seeing this new man beside her, she had an awful time remembering it.

"Can I…" she started, trailing off as she realized she wasn't sure how to ask this new man to leave her so she could get her own goodbye to… well, to himself.

"I'll go wait outside," he said. "Just… just call me in when you're ready." He hit play and proceeded to leave the TARDIS, to set foot back in Rose's own time.

He was a Time Lord, she reminded herself, as the projection smiled at her, and started to talk. Surely he wouldn't mind waiting while she said goodbye.


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Note_:

I don't own Doctor Who or intend to make profit from it.

Because Ten is a person, too, and anyway, can we really leave Rose without a smile?

Spoilers through The Parting of Ways

Goodbyes (bonus part: three)

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The Doctor's pockets felt empty without the sonic screwdriver, his hands empty without Rose's, his heart empty without her smile, but he leaned against the TARDIS, his ankles crossed, as though he were the most content creature on the planet.

The Earth's air wrapped around him. The smell of Fish and Chips, motor exhaust, the scents and sounds and vibrations of life on Earth itself welcomed him back to the place that had, in its own small way, come to be a familiar sort of time.

It was Rose's time, and that meant at least a little bit of himself considered it one of his times, as well.

It wasn't childhood with the other Time Lords, or the TARDIS, but it was a part of him, nonetheless.

"Rose Tyler," he said to himself, wondering how he could be jealous of himself.

Mickey-the-Idiot, Adam-the-Idiot 2.0, even Captain Jack Harkness were nothing in comparison. Oh, they might try, as humans tended to, but they'd all understood that the very fabric of the universe had made Rose's hand to fit perfectly into that of the Doctor. They'd seen the two work together and respectfully stepped back.

Funny, but he couldn't step away from himself.

And being honest, as any species with his genius has to, he understood Rose's perspective.

He had changed, and it wasn't just the way he looked, or having channeled the Vortex. He was different, because regeneration always left you a bit different.

And the same, he thought, closing his eyes to feel the pull of the earth once more. The earth, with its constant spin, round and round at 1,000 miles an hour, chasing around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. The familiar rotation, the beat that put his own internal rhythm right in synch with Rose's.

The Time Lord waited as the sky darkened, until the little human girl came out, her eyes perfectly dry, her make-up perfectly replaced.

"Fish and chips, Doctor?"

She smiled, the sort of smile he'd been afraid had died with his other self, and as far as he could tell, for two unmatched heartbeats, the world stood still.


End file.
